Gravediggers of Memory

Holocaust denial essays from Elliot Neaman's students

1995-2004

PHDN's foreword:
(click to read...)

PHDN's foreword:
(click to hide...)

From 1995 to 2004, Dr. Elliot Neaman (Ph.D.) taught a course about historical methods (history 210) at the University of San Francisco. He had some of his students work on Holocaust denial (and other anti-historical frauds) material and made their essays available on the internet on his "Gravediggers of memory" page. For some years now, these essays were offline. Dr. Neaman was kind enough to authorize PHDN to put them back online. Students' names have been replaced by their initials.

Dr. Neaman's introduction:
(click to read...)

Dr. Neaman's introduction:
(click to hide...)

These web pages are dedicated to all the victims of genocide in the twentieth
century. One of the great scandals of our day is the growing number of pseudo-intellectuals
who have nothing better to do than to spread lies about the events of the 1940s
in German concentration camps. Their claims that the camps were established
merely to intern Jews for the duration of the war and that no deaths resulted
from gassings flies in the face of the research of every distinguished expert
in the field. What is so disturbing about their arguments, however, is that
the deniers have been successful at creating the impression that there exist
major differences of opinion about the gas chambers, when in fact, on the substantive
issues, there is wide agreement. While one may argue about the exact number
of Jews gassed to death between 1942 and 1945, the fact that the killing machines
built at Auschwitz between1941 and 1943 were designed to murder Jews is simply
beyond dispute. But instead of distinguishing between facts and fantasy, the
deniers have succeeded in convincing many people that there is a "debate"
about the gas chambers - that there are "two sides to the issue."

Instead of burying our heads in the sand and pretending that Holocaust deniers
will just go away, the students in my class on Historical Methods at USF have
the task of studying Holocaust denial literature and carefully peeling away,
layer by layer, the distortions and historical sophistry that has been perpetrated
by these abusers of history. Like common grave robbers they violate the remnants
of the past in search of personal gain or out of sheer maliciousness. It is
hoped that the research papers posted on this web site can contribute to the
Sysiphean task of upholding truth in a world where people easily fall prey to
conspiracy theories, legends and phantasmagoric ideas without any base in reality.